Project Management is weird. You can have the same job title and be a very tactical execution-minded project manager - which is the way most of us start. Or you can be a strategic part of the leadership team, recognized for your ability to help executives make their vision a reality.  So, how do you develop yourself from tactical implementer to strategic partner?  This episode we are joined by two experienced leaders, Ralph Kliem and Gregg Richie, who have made this transition, and rose to provide pivotal strategic partnership roles with executive teams to help them develop Disaster ..read more

Meetings. Love them or hate them, they are core to what we do as project leaders. We need to pull people together (real or virtually) to discuss, plan, check-in, and get things done. But as we know, when we get people together, sometimes their misbehaviors - “goblins” - tag along, too! Being able to manage effective meetings can make or break us as PMs. And learning how to manage these misbehaviors in meetings can make or break each meeting. Fortunately, we have help! This episode we are joined by Rich Maltzman of Boston University. Rich and his colleague Jim Steward wrote the book, “Great Mee ..read more

“What percent done are you?”  Status reporting is a core skill (and responsibility) of project managers. It is an opportunity for you to check in with your team, and to build rapport and engagement with stakeholders. But it’s also something we often take for granted.  In this episode, Kate and Kim talk about how to approach status reporting whether your project is big or small, and how to leverage this key communication point to help with overall project success.   Why Status Reporting?  Essential for communicating project progress and challenges Builds trust ..read more

Being a project manager is tough. You are assigned a team of people who may never have with each other (or you) before, and you need to lead them to accomplish a task, solve a problem, or create a new deliverable. And by definition, this is a unique task - so it hasn’t been done before, at least not in this way, for these stakeholders.  In among these challenges is perhaps the toughest one: you have to lead this group of people. As project managers, these people almost never report to us - someone else is their boss. So, how do we provide leadership and direction to a group of people when ..read more

It can be hard getting a project started correctly: getting the right executive and stakeholder sponsorship and support, getting them all to agree on the scope and approach, getting funding, approvals, and all the other things required to get a project off the ground. You negotiate with other departments and get committed resource assignments and timelines. You finally get your amazing project off the ground, you’re humming along then, BOOM! The organization changes.  Your stakeholders change. Your executive sponsors change. The structure or ownership of the organization changes. Your res ..read more

Projects are hard. And a lot of them - maybe most of them - fail to live up to their expectations. Missed timelines, quality issues, budget overages, customer dissatisfaction - it seems sometimes like projects miss the mark more often than they hit it. But why is that? What can we learn from all those past projects that can help us make future projects more successful?  This is the question Jim Johnson set out to understand. In his years with the Standish Group, he and his team set the benchmark for one of the most respected analysis on project outcomes: the CHAOS Report. Join us in this ..read more

Creative decision making is key to what we do in all our projects. According to FourSight, there are 4 distinct voices in the decision making process. Do you have these voices in the room when you make decisions? Do you know when you need all 4 voices - or only a couple specific ones?  We are joined today by Teresa Lawrence who gave one of the most fun and engaging talks at this past year’s PMI Global Summit in Las Vegas. She talks us through the FourSight approach to creative problem solving, the 4 voices in decision making, and also reveals the results of Kim and Kate’s FourSight assess ..read more

“I know the world is ending, but do you have wifi here?” Sounds funny, but it’s deadly serious. Natural disasters impact critical infrastructure that we depend on every day: shelter, fresh water, food distribution, and power. These are the ones we think about.  But what about communication?  How do relief agencies, police, fire, and government coordinate a disaster response when there is no power, no cell signal, no wifi? How do community members communicate with each other, find out where to get aid, or reach out to loved ones who are worrying about them if there is no functioning c ..read more

Decisions make or break your project - starting with the decision of whether or not to even do your project. Beyond that, we have planned decisions / phase gates and ad-hoc decisions that happen throughout the entire life of our project. And if you’ve been around long enough, you know that one bad decision can sink your whole project - or at least have it taking on water, fast.  So, how should we approach decision making in a logical way which helps ensure that: The right decisions get made Decisions get made by the right people Decisions are not revisited any more than they absolut ..read more

Yeah! One of our favorite guests, Tim Creasey, returns! This time we are talking about what happens if you realize, too late in the game, that you really didn’t consider Change Management enough in your planning cycle.  It’s such a universal experience of a project manager to not have change management, and so many of us end up in these situations where we struggle to see the real benefits of a change we’ve implemented.  We figured: why not start where most of us end up: in trouble! Join Kate and Kim as we talk with Tim about how to recover. About our amazing guest, Tim Creasey An au ..read more